Microsoft Retracts Patent 182
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has retracted their recent controversial patent application. The story was first brought to light by Slashdot on Saturday. Today, Jane Prey of Microsoft announced the retraction on the SIGCSE (Special Interest in Computer Science Education) mailing list. 'Many thanks to the members of the community that brought this to my attention — and here's the latest. The patent application was a mistake and one that should not have happened. To fix this, Microsoft will be removing the patent application. Our sincere apologies to Michael Kölling and the BlueJ community.'"
Moral is complicated (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a tendency to believe that humans can err, but are basically good. And even Microsoft consists of humans. So my first reaction was "Oh good, they are not as soulless as we believe, this was an honest mistake." That option had already been pointed out during the discussion on slashdot as a problem within their process:
So, an honest mistake. But this being Microsoft it took me seconds to fall into conspiracy mode. How could they have such mistakes in their process, if they care about intellectual property? Was the mistake that they didn't hide it well? Did they simply try if they can get through with this? Can an entity that consists of basically good humans be not good in the end? (I'm afraid yes). So I still cannot decide if I can trust them or not, they seem to have lied too often in the past.
It's a good start... (Score:1, Insightful)
Would it have killed the editor... (Score:5, Insightful)
"The patent discussed on saturday" isn't significantly shorter than "the patent on a copied IDE feature" but contains more useful knowledge and less useless knowledge.
Re:It's a good start... (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies like MSFT/IBM/etc shouldn't get patents, not because they don't invent anything, but because they invent so little and patent so much.
The hardware world scares me though. On the one had they collaborate as academics to share results, and on the other hand they patent everything in sight. No, you can't have an XOR gate, not yours!
Tom
Re:Moral is complicated (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no "conspiracy" about it, this is now common among most big technology corporations: Throw buckets of patent applications at the Patent Office, and see what sticks. Often the "little people" they are ripping off don't have the means to fight it, and while the other big players know it's bullshit, they find it cheaper and quicker to just pay the license. It's not just Micorsoft, they all do it.
Re:Moral is complicated (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Moral is complicated (Score:5, Insightful)
So those three must have thought they'd invented something - otherwise they lied on that application.
Or is it legal to put people's names on a patent application without asking them if what they did is actually an "invention"?
The people at both 3 and 4 have to know they didn't "invent" anything and surely the people at 5 have to ask them at some point?
Would they have withdrawn without the outcry? (Score:2, Insightful)
and withdrawn the patent BEFORE the outcry arose. As it is:
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." -- Wendell Phillips, (1811-1884)
Modern addendum: "And the price of open software."
Patent transparency is a good thing. (Score:1, Insightful)
I mean Microsoft wouldn't just want to file bogus patents
Well, maybe Microsoft will now review all of the claims submitted by these bozos to make sure they didn't screw up before. Good thing these applications are all public - transparency is a critical part of the patent system.
Missing the point (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Moral is complicated (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope that 'award' is a share of the royalties and not a plastic Mickey Mouse statue. (They still have thousands left over from the 80's you know.)
Re:Mistake? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a bunch of nonsense. I mean, it's not impossible, but it's ridiculous to jump to that conclusion. There are tons of workalike tools in Unixland that look and behave just like the programs they're knocking off. Does that mean they were developed by porting the original program? I just made some documents that look amazingly like some other documents in-house (I'm a graphic artist, and I needed some documents very similar to some old ones but with new graphical elements, and couldn't find the originals.) By your argument, the most rational explanation for the existence of these documents is that I loaded up the originals and altered them. The new document is just so similar!
Maybe the GNOME desktop is actually a port of Windows' source code, since it looks so much like Windows?
Good start, but (Score:2, Insightful)
"nothing to see here" (Score:4, Insightful)
What about the zillions of other patents just like this one that they apply for every day? Is the burden really on ME to make sure that Microsoft hasn't been attempting to patent stuff I've clearly got "prior art" for?
This is terrible. Stop acting like "The system works". This is one example where a prior-art holder had the means to notice someone's faulty patent claim.
I'm not even sure where the burden of proof should lie. When you hire a patent attorney to do a "prior art search", they just give you a pile of existing patents that matched some keywords. How do you do a _real_ prior art search, beyond just what has already been patented? Its not even possible. The system is so hosed that every patent that resulted from it should probably just be thrown out.
I can't believe people are buying this "It was a mistake" B.S.
Re:Moral is complicated (Score:3, Insightful)
Since knowingly infringing a patent is treble damages, it's SOP for companies to tell their engineers not to do patent searches or other prior art searches before submitting patents or using ideas. The other half of this strategy is to patent as many things as possible. This way when you violate someone else's patent you can sit at the negotiating table and point all the patents of yours that they are also violating, the goal being to settle with a cross-licensing agreement that is more favorable to the party with the bigger pile of patents and with more key patents.
That exact mechanism of treble damages may not apply in this particular case, but I still wouldn't be surprised if it was corporate policy to not try too hard to discover prior art.
That a letter was found indicates that someone at MS did know about BlueJ, though, is probably what is actually getting them in trouble and causing them to drop the patent. Which just means they're going to enforce the policy of deliberate ignorance even more in the future.
Re:Why does it not surprise me... (Score:2, Insightful)
Brought to light *by* /.? (Score:4, Insightful)